Richard Klementovich, the 42-year-old Clifton, New Jersey police officer who barricaded himself in the home of his ex-wife in nearby Doylestown and turned a quiet neighborhood into a free-fire zone, was apparently attempting to commit “suicide by cop.” An admitted steroid user, Klementovich – who was paid $114, 560 in 2011 — described himself as angry “at this job and law enforcement. And it’s them who I will take out my anger on.”

“They will do the job I couldn’t and take my life,” wrote the 14-year law enforcement veteran in a June 16 e-mail to his ex-wife wife, Jill Majors. “I hope whomever comes to our house is ready to die tomorrow because I will be Jill…. Tell the police I have a surprise for them, this is the way I want to die.” When police arrived at the home, they found a manila envelope containing a note in which Klementovich said that he had scoped rifles, a cache of 2,000 rounds of ammunition, and that he “was ready to die.”

After Klementovich fired on police vehicles, several SWAT teams and emergency response units converged on the scene. Local residents were ordered to seek shelter in a nearby police facility or in their basements. Despite the deployment of paramilitary operators and heavy weaponry – including a tank-like vehicle – the standoff ended in anti-climactic fashion. Displaying uncommon restraint, the police allowed one of their own to surrender to a negotiator and leave the home of “his own free will,” reports NJ.com.

Prior to June 17, Klementovich was part of New Jersey’s tax-subsidized elite: He reportedly was paid $114,560 in 2011, at least some of which was used to feed his steroid addiction — which most likely would have led to a prison term had he been a Mundane (or common citizen).

Steroid use – including the attendant psychological syndrome called “Roid Rage” is quite commonplace among cops. “Officer Jimmy,” an anonymous active-duty police officer, told Men’s Health magazine that “Steroid use is very pervasive in law enforcement. I’d say, of the cops I know, 20 percent to 25 percent of them are using” steroids. “Jimmy,” who became a police officer in 2000, is a good representative of the “dominate-intimidate” mindset that defines contemporary law enforcement. He believes – or at least believed at one time – that police are under-utilizing an important tool: “What law enforcement needs is a little testosterone. Every cop should do a [steroid] cycle a year.”

If Klementovich had snapped and committed an act of violence against an innocent person while on duty, he most likely would be on “administrative leave” – that is, paid vacation – while his police union provided him with expensive legal help and unqualified support. The fact that he was able to walk away from the standoff, rather than being killed in a full-force military onslaught, is itself an illustration of the privileged position Klementovich continues to occupy: If he had been a mere Mundane, he would almost certainly be dead.

The siege in Clifton underscores another important and largely ignored point – namely, the asininity of the assumption that police officers, unlike Mundanes, can be entrusted with firearms. One of the tenets of the civilian disarmament catechism is that the same guns that are unacceptably dangerous when owned by private citizens are transmuted into instruments of civic amity when wielded by the State’s enforcement caste. Klementovich’s rampage is just the latest of numerous incidents demonstrating that the police are actually the most dangerous element of society.